Alexandra Borchardt is a senior journalist, book author, lecturer and media adviser.
She works as a consultant and coach for the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in their Table Stakes Europe Programme on the digital transformation of newsrooms and for Hamburg Media School, where she heads the Journalism Innovators Program. She is the lead author of the 2021/22 EBU News Report of the European Broadcasting Union and is affiliated with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford as a Senior Research Associate after having served as Director of Leadership Programmes until 2019.
Prior to this she was managing editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Germany’s leading quality daily.
Alexandra is a honorary Professor for Leadership and Digital Transformation at TU Munich’s TUM School of Management where she teaches “Leadership and Strategy in the 21st Century”. Until September 2021 she was professor for media transformation and co-head of the master’s program in cultural journalism at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She gives keynotes on digital transformation and the media and publishes commentaries and essays, also a monthly column for Medieninsider. She is the author of “Mehr Wahrheit wagen – Warum die Demokratie einen starken Journalismus braucht” (Dare more truth – Why democracy needs strong journalism), Dudenverlag, 2020, and “Mensch 4.0 – Frei bleiben in einer digitalen Welt” (Freedom in a digital world), Random House, 2018.
She is a member of the Committee for Editorial Independence at Czech publishing house Economia and a board member of Constructive Foundation in Aarhus. At the Council of Europe she served as a rapporteur on the Committee of Experts on Freedom of Expression and Digital Technologies until September 2021 and prior to that as vice chair on the Committee of Experts on Quality Journalism in the Digital Age.
At SZ she held leadership roles in the politics and business sections. She was also founding editor of Süddeutsche’s ‘Plan W’, an award-winning quarterly magazine for women and business. Before joining SZ she worked for Financial Times Deutschland and Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Tulane University, New Orleans (1994), and in 2013 completed a Programme for Management Development at IESE Business School, Barcelona.
@AlexaBorchardt
